Culture, Connections, and Community Marketer extraordinaire, Marcus Collins is a clinical professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. A former advertising executive who worked on iTunes + Nike sport music initiatives at Apple, Marcus contends that what we wear, what we eat, where we work, who we date, and just about every facet of our social living is informed by our underlying culture. And the primary goal of all industries is to “get people to move”, whether it is to buy, to click, to watch, vote, or subscribe. In this intriguing conversation with Steve Goldbach of De ..read more

Amy Chang: Becoming An AI Entrepreneur Amy Chang serves on the board of directors for The Walt Disney Company and Procter & Gamble, and has previously served on the boards of Cisco, Splunk, Marqeta, and Informatica. In 2018, Amy’s start-up business, Accompany, an AI/ML-based relationship intelligence platform serving Fortune 500 companies, was acquired by Cisco for $270 million. Post-acquisition, she led Cisco’s multi-billion-dollar 6000-person Collaboration business. Prior to Accompany, Amy was at Google, where she led the teams for Google Analytics for over seven years, growing Google ..read more

What did we learn from our provocateurs in 2023? Who provoked us to think again and act differently? Which stories remain with us? The Provocateurs podcast series gives you direct access to the ideas, experiences, and insights of remarkable leaders from around the world. In 2023, in collaboration with Deloitte, Thinkers50 hosted an inspiring mix of guests in thought-provoking conversations. The topics that were discussed and debated ranged from The Inside Track on Growth with Tiffani Bova to Radical Candor with Kim Scott. Along the way we unpicked branding and the metaverse with Martin Lindstr ..read more

Rescuing Levi’s A self-declared ‘brand guy’, Chip Bergh was appointed president and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. in 2011. During his tenure the company has experienced a dramatic turnaround marked by outstanding performance and reclaiming its cultural relevance. In short, Levi’s has become cool again! Along the way, Chip has shown himself to be a provocateur.   In this podcast with Des Dearlove, co-founder of Thinkers50 and Geoff Tuff, Principal of Deloitte Consulting LLP, Chip explains why his own Levi’s have never seen the inside of a washing machine, how he galvanised the business c ..read more

 Rare Breeds – Marching To A Different Drum  Leadership and brand expert Sunny Bonnell is the bestselling co-author of Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different (with Ashleigh Hansberger, 2019). Sunny and Ashleigh are also the creators of the Rare Breed Leadership Platform, and the hit YouTube show, Rare Breed TV.  In this Provocateurs podcast with Thinkers50 co-founder, Des Dearlove, and Geoff Tuff of Deloitte, Sunny outlines seven unconventional traits displayed by ‘rare breeds’ – traits that are traditionally seen as vices, such as being rebell ..read more

The author of New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, Kim Scott joins Steve Goldbach of Deloitte and Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50 to talk through the politics, practicalities, and purpose of feedback in the workplace.  In this discussion, part of The Provocateurs podcast series, Kim explains how her two-by-two framework for radical candor can help create productive feedback by avoiding the two extremes of obnoxious aggression and ruinous sympathy. She also shares her insights on bias, prejudice, and bullying and of ..read more

Author of The Anxious Achiever and Hiding in the Bathroom, Morra Aarons-Mele is also founder of the award-winning social impact agency Women Online.  In this Provocateurs podcast episode, she joins Geoff Tuff of Deloitte and Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50 to set the record straight on normalising anxiety. Data shows that high achievers manage more anxiety and depression, and Morra explains how to rethink the relationship between mental health and success. She describes anxiety as a spectrum, where at one end it can be quite debilitating and at the other, it’s a nervous but motivating energy ..read more

Former professional poker player Annie Duke is a master of decision making. In this Provocateurs podcast, hosted by Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50 and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte, she challenges us to examine our own biases and self-narratives to focus on the things we can control, in order to make better choices.  By sharing practical insights and strategies for improving decision making and developing resilience, Annie emphasises the importance of analysing decisions objectively, rather than relying on the outcome to determine their quality. The author of Quit: The Power of Knowing When to ..read more

Self-confessed contrarian thinker and provocateur since childhood, Martin Lindstrom is an international branding expert and one of the world’s leading authorities on the metaverse. Here he joins Geoff Tuff of Deloitte and Des Dearlove of Thinkers50 in a fascinating conversation about branding as an emotional construct, the power of small data, and lying on a bed of Lego. In the 1990s, Lindstrom pioneered how to build brands on the internet and has since coined terms such as clicks & mortar, contextual marketing, and texting. He has published eight New York Times and Wall Street Journal be ..read more

Shelley Zalis is a pioneer for online research, becoming the first female chief executive ranked in the research industry’s top 25, and today she works with Fortune 500 companies, impact organizations, and conscious leaders to advance equality in the workplace. And she mentors women all over the world. Shelley is the CEO of The Female Quotient, an equality services company that creates platforms for women and solutions for organizations committed to closing the gender gap in the workplace. Its signature Equality Lounge is now a stand-out feature at key industry conferences around the globe. In ..read more